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The Long Road to Glory: Evolution of A Series
The Long Road to Glory: Evolution of A Series is an article by Kurt Busch in InterAction magazine Fall 1992.'' Evolution of A Series Three games into the Quest for Glory saga, Lori and Corey Cole are discovering things they never planned. by Kurt Busch By now, thousands and thousands of devoted adventurers are puzzling through the all-new VGA Quest for Glory I: So You Want to be a Hero, dispatching animated clay monsters and building the all- important attributes of their Fighters, Magic Users, or Thieves. But even as these fantasy fans are busily exploring the first chapter of the series Compute called "a breakthrough in adventure design," many of these same computer questers are asking the same question: "When will the third chapter be released?" Tricky question. Quest for Glory III: Wages of War is in its final stages and may actually be on the shelf by the time you read this article. But the original third chapter the one envisioned by series creators Lori and Corey Cole back in 1989 when they set out to build a completely original quartet of fantasy games - is still on the drawing board and more than a year and a half away from shipping. "When we developed the concept for the series," explained Corey, "we wanted some unifying themes for the story. We worked with the four seasons, the four basic elements - Earth, Air, Fire, and Water and the four cardinal points of the compass. We planned to create four games to follow these elements. "The first game - So You Want to be a Hero - is springtime and Earth and set in medieval Germany in the North. The second game - Trial by Fire - was the element of Fire, in the summer, and set in the South, in Arabia." "The original third chapter," added Lori, "was to be Shadows of Darkness, set in Transylvania the East - and in the Fall, using Air as the central element." Somewhere between finishing Trial by Fire and cranking up the design process for Shadows of Darkness, the husband-and-wife team realized a fifth chapter would have to be added to bridge the games. That chapter became Wages of War. A Story Born of War Wages of War is the latest and largest installment in the award-winning series that combines the excitement and artistry of the Sierra adventure style with the emotional involvement of fantasy role-playing character development. Wages of War takes up where Trial by Fire left off. New players can create their own hero while experienced adventurers can import their characters from Quest for Glory I and //, continuing with the skills and inventory acquired in the previous games. Once again, the player can choose to move through the game as a Fighter, Magic User, or Thief, with puzzles and solutions changing depending on the character type. After selecting a Hero, the player customizes attributes like strength, intelligence, agility, climbing skills, luck, and the like. It's a story set in East Africa where war is brewing between two tribes. Sacred artifacts have disappeared and each tribe blames the other for the disappearance. If your Hero looks deeply enough, he may find that dark forces are behind the coming war, working toward their own evil purposes. The story took shape in the minds of Lori and Corey shortly after the completion of Trial by Fire, at the height of this country's war with Iraq. They realized that characters and plot lines introduced in the second Quest for Glory game were leading them in directions they hadn't expected, presenting interesting opportunities for the evolving Hero. And they saw that, despite his adventures, the Hero still had some growing up to do. Seasoning a Swashbuckler The concept of seasons in the games represents the maturation of the Hero as he moves from story to story. It's a critical component in a series that from the very beginning - was designed to be a defined quartet of stories, representing an overall saga with a distinct beginning, middle, and end. "One of the unifying themes," explained Corey, "is the growth of your character, going from being an adolescent Hero in the first game to being a young man in the second. You're strong and confident..." "The third game," continued Lori, "was to show you as a master of your profession, with the fourth depicting you at the mature peak of your powers." In the first episode, the player is a new graduate of the Famous Adventurer's Correspondence School, ready to venture out into the springtime of his career and build a rep. It's a light-hearted, exhilarating journey into the unknown that can be replayed three times with three distinct outlooks at puzzle-solving. In the second chapter - Trial by Fire - the Hero enters the summer of his experience, facing more difficult challenges with more highly-developed skills. While the episode is more serious and dangerous than its predecessor, it retains the enchanting mixture of fantasy, challenge, and humor that made the first game a hit with so many fans. Of all the reasons Lori and Corey found for creating a bridge between Trial by Fire and Shadows of Darkness, the most compelling was the feeling the designers had that the Hero character simply hadn't matured enough to face the very grim challenges awaiting him in Transylvania. Prelude to a Gory Story "In terms of the role-playing aspects," said Corey, "Shadows of Darkness is going to be a very difficult game. You'll have very tough opposition from the very beginning of the game." "Also," said Lori, "you'll be very much alone. In Trial by Fire you had a lot of friends to help you. You always had a place to go back to to rest. You always had a place of safety until the very end of the game. Once you get into Shadows of Darkness, you're not going to have any sanctuary. You won't be able to trust anyone, because nobody will trust you. "Wages of War is the bridge," she continued. "You start out with people you know to help you along in the beginning. But when push comes to shove, you're the one who's on his own, who has to solve the j ultimate mystery. As you go along, just when you think you're all alone, your allies come I back to you, but you have to | face the final challenge by yourself. "It's a complex game," she said, "because you have a lot of characters with their own game intelligence." Complex is a good word. The Quest for Glory series has always defied categorization, combining different game genres. They're great to play, but tough to describe. What Type of Hero are You? When describing the Quest for Glory games, fans and the press often cite the three different Hero types. In theory, if one were to play as, say, a Fighter, he could go back after finishing the game and start over as a Magic User or Thief. But can you really play three distinct games simply by switching character types? "The games really customize themselves depending on the way the player approached them," said Corey, "Many of the puzzles have multiple solutions, depending on what sort of game the player thinks he's playing - a combat game, a conversation game, a puzzle game, etc." "The first choice you make is the character type," added Lori. "If you choose the Fighter, we assume you want to play a combat game. If you become a magic user, you'll have to overcome problems with spells and intelligence. If you're a thief, it's your wits and skills against the world. "In Wages of War," Lori continued, "the first major challenge you become aware of is the fact that you have to get two magic items back to their rightful owners who are warring tribes. The Fighter's approach is to earn the right to get one of the items from a tribe by becoming initiated as a warrior. He has to build up his skills through combat-like competition. But the Magic User can't be initiated into that tribe because they dislike magic, and he doesn't have the strengths and skills that it takes to be initiated. So he has to take a completely different approach and win the item through magic." "And the Thief, of course," said Corey, "thinks like a thief, and has to decide which tribe he's going to steal from." Corey said they recommend uninitiated players start out as a Fighter, since that character's role is fairly straightforward and his mission is more apparent. See a monster? Does it look hostile? Waste it. Your attributes will increase as you take these enemies on. See a locked door? That's okay, you've been practicing your skills on monsters. Smash it down. As a Magic User or Thief, on the other hand, you could go through an entire game like So You Want to be a Hero without ever actually doing combat or killing a monster. You could play a totally nonviolent game that required completely different solutions to puzzles and problems. "With the first game, we went with a familiar fantasy where you're always in the same sort of world and you always know what kind of thing to expect," said bin, "is that - while your character is the same the location changes radically from game to game. And the difference in setting really alters the whole game. "We don't try to force you into a single path or a single way of behaving," said Corey. "Bur if your character has certain skills and you solve a puzzle using those skills rather than ignoring them, you will lie rewarded for your ingenuity." Following the right path through these games is trickier than it sounds. There are a lot of detours and side quests and difficult choices involving multiple solutions to puzzles. And, of course, each game takes you to an entirely new world. Distant and Different Lands "The difference between Quest for Glory and most other fantasy role-playing games role-play i ng setting - the forest, the medieval Europe setting and then we broke the stereotypes. We showed the players other cultures in the world and the possibilities for other mythologies. We really did a lot of research for Trial by fire to get the Arabian Nights flavor throughout the game. "So when we got to this one, set in Africa, we based one tribe on the Masai culture and brought elements of Egyptian mythology into the story. We want to bring these things to the game, but we don't want to lose the player in the process. We want the player to be comfortable, and he'll be more comfortable with these new worlds and cultures if he's already played the first two games." All of which brings up an interesting point: Quest /or Glory III. like all Sierra adventure games. Jots not require previous experience with the series. A player can import his character from QFG I or II. or can simply start fresh, choosing a character type and modifying his attributes. Hut, g\\ en maturation process tor the character and the player described by Lori and Corey, can a new player really jump directly into Wages of War without going through the apprenticeship of the first two chapters? "I think so," said Corey. "What we've always said is diat people who have played a previous Quest for Glory are coming in with a head start. You'll know what you're going to face. By the time you get to Wages of War, you'll understand the Hero and our mindset. But you truly can start fresh and learn these things as you go along." "Later on, starting fresh will get tougher," said Lori. "Shadows of Darkness will be a hard game to just jump into without prior experience." "It will certainly be possible for a player to get into Shadows of Darkness without playing the first three games," said Corey, "but he'll be jumping right into a very hostile environment with little preparation. The hallmark of the series is a very serious central story with some funny bits on top, and we'll certainly keep this. We think Shadows of Darkness is going to be an experience that people will enjoy, but it will be a very intense sort of enjoyment. And it will be a very intense game to design." Who Does What? How exactly do the pair go about designing these games? How do two people work together to form one seamless saga? Most fans have always figured that Lori (whose background includes theatre, ait, and designing traditional paper-based role playing games! did the actual design and writing while Corey (a senior programmer at Sierra) figured out the programming and logic. But that's as simplistic (and inaccurate) as saying John Lennon wrote the words while Paul McCartney wrote the music. The actual process is a lot more complex. "The fun part is when we're starting out on a game," said Corey. "We toss around some ideas and come up with 10, 20, 50 ideas, and we basically feed off each other." "We don't really write these things down in the beginning," said Lori. "We sit and discuss things and have an ongoing dialogue that eventually takes shape as a game." "Lori is more of a story person and character person and I'm more of a puzzle person," said Corey. "Lori ends up doing the vast bulk of the writing. In particular, character dialogue is almost exclusively Lori's. I work more on coming up with game mechanics, puzzles, and details of the skills system. " As most of his friends and coworkers know, Corey is also an unabashed punster, and it's his groaners that keep popping up throughout the Hero's adventures. Beyond the initial design stage, it's often been Lori's job to nail down the specifics of design and dialogue. Since Corey is a programmer, working on several different Sierra projects (including the anxiously awaited conversion of seven titles for the new Sega CD drive), he is often unavailable during the bulk of the design process. This, however, may change. "Starting with Quest for Glory IV," said Corey, "I plan to devote much more of my time to design." An Educational Side Road Fans of Lori and Corey already know that the pair took divergent design detours in between the completion of Trial by Fire and the beginning of Wages of War. Lori created Mixed-Up Fairy Tales, a stunningly beautiful sequel to the phenomenally popular Mixed-Up Mother Goose. The game, aimed at early readers, featured Lori's hallmark fantasy, hosted by a friendly dragon (named Bookwyrm, in a clever reference to an old European name for dragons). At the same tune, Corey created the adventure Castle of Dr. Brain. In it, the player is an applicant for a lab assistant position and must puzzle through a bizarre castle. Each room is a lesson in skills like science, astronomy, math, logic, cryptography, and electronics. "After finishing Trial by Fire, we were going to jump right into Wages of War, but a new design team wouldn't be available for another six months. Ken Williams asked us to design educational games during the interim." Some of the design elements the pair came up with were slightly radical. "All the Sierra games have an ego - a little person walking around who you control," said Corey. "I got rid of that in Dr. Brain and created a first-person point of view. You are the character. That's something we've thought of before for Quest for Glory, and may think about more in the future. For continuity's sake, we'll probably keep the ego for the duration of the series, but we may try something new on a new series." Are All Heroes Men? The "ego" is a surprising source of controversy and debate in the series. For one thing, Lori and Corey have insisted that - even in animated introductions - his ego should never carry on a dialogue. They feel it will destroy the identification a player must have with his Flero if he sees someone else's words pop up in the dialogue box. The more intriguing controversy, however, is that it's man, and female players have asked the designers it they could provide an optional female ego. Adding a simple choice to ego gender would increase art requirements by at least 30%, Corey estimated. Not out of the question, but not advisable, he maintains, because the story would remain the same. Other characters would still respond to the Hero in the same way, whether the Hero was a man or a woman, and in places like ancient Arabia or medieval Germany, that simply wouldn't make sense. "We have created a very egalitarian world," said Lori, "where you have woman warriors and woman role models throughout the game." Lori said another reason for maintaining a male character is the romance element. Starting with Wages of War, the Hero's romantic life will begin, culminating two games down the line when he'll have a chance to choose a wife from female characters he'll meet throughout his adventures. Of course, he'll also have the choice of remaining single. The Wages of Honor "Without being preachy," said Corey, "We are putting some messages forth in these games. One of the strongest messages of Quest for Glory III is an anti-war message. You come into a game as a war is about to begin and your mission is to stop that war from happening. You start getting a better and better idea of just how senseless war is and how everybody loses by it." "And the other thing we're trying to do," said Lori, "is get the player to look for the cause of problems, not just the symptoms." 'We're advancing a theme of honor," said Corey. "In the first game you had to pretty much play in an honorable way. As the games progress, the choices become more subtle and the player must decide whether or not he's going to play in an honorable fashion, if a dishonorable act is justified by the greater good it accomplishes. With each successive game, we're going more and more into moral situations where the solutions are not always clear cut. There aren't necessarily right or wrong answers. But the answers you choose define your character." What many players who didn't completely stick to the straight and narrow path may not have discovered is there is a fourth character type, achieved only as the reward of an honorable course of action. Players who make it all the way through Quest for Glory II or in a completely honorable fashion find an option at the end of the game that allows them to become a Paladin. "The Paladin is essentially similar to a Fighter," said Corey, "but has great personal honor and cares about good above all else. You have to play under a rather strict set of conditions. You have to play in an honorable fashion at all times or you'll lose some of your powers. But you gain certain special abilities as a Paladin. You gain the power to heal yourself, as well as protection against certain monsters and the ability to sense evil." "Unlike traditional fantasy role-playing games where the Paladin is just a pious law-abider, Quest for Glory III demands that the Paladin make sacrifices for the greater good. He fights for the people, not for the law. He will have to break the law in this game because at least one law is wrong. "When laws interfere with human rights," she said, "what judgement call do you make? What is good? That's the question." Big question. Then again, these are big games. How you play these games depends on what kind of game you think you're playing. A Magic User will have to discover solutions through magic, a Thief through cunning, and a Fighter through courage and, sometimes, brute force. Quest for dory games customize themselves to the individual player's game style. [[Category:Articles]